Fine. So what have we learned from the last few years? After all, a lot of us have had our lives totally upended through our own job loss, or those close to us. It would be great if the next time didn’t cause quite so much heartbreak.

Read more on my Workbloom blog»

The presentation I gave was titled You are not your job title, and focused on how to broaden your job search well beyond the scope of what your last job paid you to do.  The problem is this:  Once you broaden the scope to be anything in the world, how do you know what to concentrate on?

Here’s the answer:

• What you like to do
• What you’re good at
• What others will pay you for

The good news is that YOU get to pick the balance between these three elements.  No matter what you choose, if it’s the best for where you are right now, you can get behind that choice.  It’s very empowering, and usually eye-opening.

So check out the slides, and if you’re in a position to need this kind of help right now, by all means contact Carol on the website.

As with many articles, some of the most helpful information is actually in the little sidebar embedded in the page, so make sure you check that out.

I’ve talked about this before, but here’s the thing:  Even when you’re leaving a job – especially at that time – you have to decide who you want to be.  Ultimately, you have to be at peace with yourself over your decision.  And, believe me, your choices will come back to haunt you in the future.  The world is just too small to hide from karma.

So, decide:  Do you want to be known as honest, useful, helpful, someone that those people might want to work with again?  Or do you want to be known as deceitful, bitter, and someone they’re glad to not have to know anymore?

Yes, it may hurt.  We’re all human, and pain is a part of that game.  But it’s your choice to how you use that pain, whether you use it to burn your bridges, or to build new ones.

I can honestly say that I’m not upset about this.  Instead, it’s just the final acknowledgment that I need to say goodbye and move on with my life.

I’m incredibly lucky, actually.  Despite an interesting bout with a crown falling off my tooth Monday – got that all fixed up yesterday – I have my health and as many mental faculties as I’ve ever had.  More important, I have an incredible range of friends, colleagues, and supporters.  It’s amazing how much of a difference that makes for getting through the day.

And for the moment, I have a lot of energy and ideas.  Here’s the current priority list:

1. Complete the HP termination process.
2. Continue to monitor local job listings, looking for opportunities in business management, product line innovation, organizational effectiveness, and coaching.
3. Contact companies which deliver coaching as a primary service, to see if they’d be interested in hiring me as a coach.
4. Start developing the idea that I would independently consult on business planning/operations/effectiveness, connected with organizational coaching.
5. Explore an idea I had on coaching around sacred liturgical music.

But in order to do these effectively, I’ll have to close off a number of action items which are buzzing around my head, inbox, and task list.  I’ve been kind of letting that slide in the last three weeks, so I have to get back to being organized.

And today, my wife and I are going to start swimming regularly – a bit of damage was done to the diet while we were on vacation.  But it was such a great time with our daughter!

The hard question was when she enquired about my target salary.  She wouldn’t give me the pay range of the job, but instead asked me to tell her MY target range, with the understanding that I should expect a drop in pay and it’s all negotiable anyway.  That’s always a tough question to answer, but I hope I did a decent job of winging it.

So another tiny glimmer of hope suddenly emerged!

First, I found out that the job opening which seemed possible at some point has now slipped from my grasp.  So the probability is now vanishingly small that I’m going to get an HP job in the next three weeks.

On the plus side, my son returned safely from a wonderful trip to California, where he engaged with leading minds in the homebrew community and learned a great deal.  Can’t wait to hear the scoop from him.

On the downside, I’ve heard lots of bad news – relatives of friends dying, more people losing their jobs, and on and on.  There’s a great number of people we need to pray for this week.

But the big positive:  We just began the 19th Sacred Music Colloquium tonight.  We started right off with a bang, singing Veni Creator Spiritus.  There’s absolutely nothing like hundreds of people coming together to sing a beautiful hymn like that – and doing it successfully!  My heart leaps with joy.

We practiced some other music for tomorrow’s Mass, with varying levels of confidence.  Ah well, more work to do.

I signed up for the polyphony choir being led by Jenny Donelson, and we had the first practice for that group tonight.  The hymn O Salutaris Hostia (Pierre de La Rue) actually came out in 4-part harmony pretty well after a few run-throughs.  An attempt at solfege was a bit rockier, that exercises parts of my brain that aren’t turned on very well.

But it’s only the first day.  We wouldn’t want to get it perfect right from the beginning.

]]> http://dierschow.com/wordpress/sacredmusic/a-day-of-beginnings-and-endings/feed 2 http://dierschow.com/wordpress/career/the-entracte http://dierschow.com/wordpress/career/the-entracte#comments Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:32:53 +0000 Carl http://dierschow.com/wordpress/?p=430 My friend Yee Sing reminded me to add another update on how the career-change journey is going.  It’s been a strange week – a lot going on, but little going on.  Let me explain.

My hunt for jobs inside HP has basically run its course.  Yes, I check the job board every morning.  I even applied for a couple of HR-type jobs the other day.  But there’s only one job that I really have any chance of getting, and it’s not likely to come to the short-list state for another week yet.  As a result, the ability to spend time focusing on my future in HP has gradually declined.

I also gave a presentation to some HP leaders on Wednesday, thus completing the last of the formal commitments I’d made.  It went very well, but it’s sad to realize that it’s probably the last one I’ll be able to give.

If I do land that position I mentioned, it will be rather strange to RE-engage.  Not a concern, really, but just something much different than any experience I’ve ever had before.

So my time this week has started to shift to my future career outside the company.  But because I’m going to that Colloquium next week, it doesn’t feel like I can start any BIG efforts.  I also think that my time away for the next three weeks will help me to clear my head.  When I get back, my full intention is to work on three things:

• The final separation activities – health insurance, stock options, and so on.
• Contacting companies that are in the business of delivering coaching services, to see if they’d hire me as a coach.
• Defining my new coaching+consulting business, and learning from others who have successfully done that.

When I played in the orchestra for musicals in High School, I learned that there’s a piece of music which is played after the intermission, to start the second act – it’s called the Entr’Acte.  That’s where I feel that I am right now in my career – closing the first act, and getting ready for the second.  But since the second act hasn’t really started yet, it feels more like a preparation stage – a leaning-toward.

But since I continue to get so much support from friends around the world (thanks, Yee Sing!) it’s not a terrifying experience.  Just a leap into the unknown.

So I’m off looking at my life outside HP.

One of the things that I find rather strange, actually, is that I tend to make a lot of progress on my decisions when I talk with people.  So as I’ve had to answer the question “What are you going to do next?” several hundred times in the last month, things have become more clear in my mind.

And better yet, my confidence in myself has grown, as has my optimism.  Some of that is built upon the amazing support that I’ve received from all my friends and co-workers, both inside and outside the company.

I think this is part of the magic of coaching.  You bring things to life through conversation, and by declaring your intentions to another person, they become more real, more within reach.

This is why I love coaching.  Real things happen.  Valuable, life-changing things.

Can’t ask for better!